Tiffin reunion – part 1

So, Isabella and Ian arrived on the 2nd of May (at least that’s when I thought they got here) there was some emailing and I arranged to meet on weds evening in Shibuya, so that I could show them around a little. I sent very precise directions (well I thought they were…they were probably crap directions) via email of how to meet at the infamous Hatchiko statue.

I turn up just before 7pm, and Shibuya, as usual, is jam-packed with bodies (live ones) but it’s not so hard to find Caucasians in Japan, they kind of stick out. I find them hiding behind one of the large planters beside the Hatchiko statue. I scream at them as a form of greeting (a traditional Tiffian greeting call). I haven’t seen Is in ages! So, it’s entirely full of all types of coolness that I see her in Tokyo!

The first thing we do is the main crossing, which is a veritable melee of people trying to get across the road. We weasel our way to the front of the amassing crowds waiting to cross, so that we can get the full effect of the crossing. I must say I was a little disappointed as you usually get a full on wall of people coming at you and it never looks like anyone is going to get past anyone else, but somehow the opposing walls of people meet, mesh and get to where they want to go.

We have a little tour of the main street then we look for dinner. We end up in a little Japanese eel restaurant (I had no idea it was an eel restaurant, I just thought it was an izakaya). The waiters quickly work out that we are English and send over their best English speaker! Very sweet of them. They really make an effort. There is a moment where they nervously ask if it’s okay that they only sell eel and that we can only stay 2 hours. There is some great sign language going on, where the waiter tries to describe their restaurant with something that looked suspiciously like a rendition of ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’. He was actually trying to point out that they sell all parts of the eel; the head, body, tail, the internal organs, and everything in between. Luckily, Is and Ian aren’t fussy eaters, so it’s all good and we order our drinks. Then comes the harder bit of ordering, as the entire menu is in Japanese (including the price, but to be honest food in Japan is very reasonable and luckily I can read the Chinese numbers, so it’s not really an issue) I ask what the waiter recommends, and he says something, then I stare blankly back; obviously, nothing has gone in, but hey, this is just yet another culinary adventure for me, and it’s been how I’ve been ordering food most of the time in Japan, close your eyes and hope for the best), pause for a moment, then smile and nod ‘yes please, we’ll have whatever you just said’, nicely rounded off by a big grin.

So, we sit and chat about stuff and things. I get shown the ‘itinerary’ that Ian carefully prepared, in CAD, of their whole 5 month trip. I am suitably impressed. There’s even special time dedicated to the ‘Tiffin Reunion’, which had been lovingly hatched in Tiffin blue, the colour had been carefully recreated using Is’s expertise.

The eel is amazing. Succulent and delicious, we also have some weird salad type veg; spring onions, cucumber, carroty stuff in some eccentric dip, which you couldn’t quite pin down what it tasted like. It looks like crunchy peanut butter but starts off tasting almost spicy, then bitter and sour with a lemony type kick. A very interesting assault of taste on ones taste buds, and a nice way to round off a new culinary experience.

I then take them to TiGhT. We get there and it already looks full, but I poke my head up and the barman sees me, I mutter something about it being a bit busy in bad Japanese, and he asks how many people I have. Just 3, I say. He say’s ‘come on up’ and gets everyone else in there to shuffle up to make some standing room near the mirror. We spend a good fews hours there, with the lovely eight sea mountain sake that I tried last time.

The time came to leave after a good chat and we arranged to meet up the day after, for a little sightseeing.

1pm, Ueno park, Exit 1 of Metro Ueno station. It’s a gloriously sunny day and everyone is out relaxing and enjoying the first day of an extended holiday. Is and Ian, aren’t there as early as they were for Hatchiko, so I start getting paranoid that they are lost in Tokyo…but they arrive at about quarter past and I take them back to a more appropriate exit so that we can have a look at the Ueno market, Ameya Yokocho.

We walk a little way down the street and straight away walk past a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It’s lunch time so we go in. We have some good sushi. There was some awesome slightly seared salmon which just melted in my mouth! Gorgeous! I nearly melted too. After our sushi interlude we continue the business of looking at the market, we have a quick walk through, and it’s packed. There are people selling meat and fish, tea, and intermixed are cheap clothes stalls. We wind our way out on to the main high street and I drag them into Yodabashi (an electronics store) and show them sheer superiority of the variety of goods on offer in a standard electronics shop. Including a jocky machine (hopefully pictures to follow).

After this eye-opening insight we head over to the park itself. We stroll in and very quickly find a Buddhist temple, the architecture was well appreciated by my companions. Who proceeded to spend a good 20mins taking photos of the roofs. More of a stroll took us through the temple and towards a lake. There were quite an assortment of food stalls throughout the park, some even sold takoyaki (I’ll go into this in more depth some other time…but, basically, tako: is octopus, and yaki: is a form of cooking where the food is cooked on the flame, which in this case is actually a dimpled hotplate.).

We behold the sight of the lake, which is crawling with floatation devices in the form of rowing boats, pedal boats, and pedal-powered swans/overgrown ducks. The swan/duck contraptions were also in possession of large bowties around their necks. Classy. It was obviously too much to resist, but we had to rent a swan/duck. I was in the middle of the thing; in charge of steering, and Is and Ian were in charge of pedal power…well, I say Is and Ian, I mean; Is was. It became apparent that Is was doing most of the pedalling and Ian was just being lazy. We cruised around in our Duck-mobile, accosting the other vessels and occupants. Is (and Ian) managed to speed past a few people for a laugh; an excellent past time. I was in charge of waving manically at people. We were not the only ones to be enjoying the boat rides; there was a very cunning seagull who had chosen to travel in style and was perched on the head of a swan/duck.

After our little laucastrine gallivants, we walked to the edge of the park, from where I was going to walk them to the University of Tokyo to let them have a little walk around. On our way, we did find a really cool looking pre-fab shop which induced much photography from our architecture tour. And then there was the sudden realisation that there was something else in Ueno park that they really wanted to see. The building of the museum of western art was apparently a must see. So we ended up heading back from whence we came. Powering it through the park to try and catch get in to the museum before the 5pm closing time was a little bit of a mission. Especially as the park is rather large, and I didn’t really know where I was. But we made it. There were actually two buildings very close to one another. The first was rather oppressive; it looked as though it was wearing a large sombrero, and the second was elegant http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/nmwa/index.htm. It was surrounded by several art works and looked like a very well designed gallery. There were really simple, clean cut lines and a sweeping glass front at ground level. We snuck inside, which was a little disappointing, as the lighting for the space was rather poor and the whole space felt a little dull and dingy, despite the huge glass wall which surrounded a good two sides of the space.



I then discovered that my University ID card got me into the exhibition for free, which was nice because we just wanted to look at the design of the building.

We walked into a three storey high gallery, which centred around two cylindrical concrete columns which stretched up to the intersection of roof beams. Some of the roof beams were exposed from the presence of a very interesting sky light; a pyramidal cut out from the ceiling with a isosceles triangle as a base, with the glass panes to let the light in on the face of the pyramid with the shortest base length. It looked amazing. We stood in awe for quite a while. The rest of the gallery took you through the building, moving from room to room there was a different style, but they all flowed very well with out ever coming across as a box sectioned into different rooms. Even the cladding was well chosen. Hopefully I’ll be able to steal some photos of the building from Is. Eventually we were ushered out by a rather menacing group of black-suited curators. Actually, it felt more like we were being herded out of the exhibition; quite a sight to behold.

After being expelled from the museum, we wondered into the park again, towards the zoo, where there were some food stalls and a very small fun fair for kiddies. There we found a Japanese crepe van, where I enforced the idea that they should try one. If you’ve never come across Japanese crepes, they are a delectable melody of sugary-goodness, possibly Death. My friends chose wisely; opting for a strawberry, custard cream, fresh cream and chocolate ensemble; in this crepe-shaped sugary-goodness/death there was: a strip of chocolate cake, piped custard, piped fresh cream, a very succulent looking redder than red strawberry, and strawberry ice cream. It was then expertly folded in to a sixth and placed into a paper holder garnished with some stick of pastry, a stick of chocolate shavings and two spoons (after some gesturing) inserted then handed over to a very wide-eyed Isabella. I had some lovely cinnamon dough stick encrusted in my favourite food-group: sugar. We sat and savoured. Well I sat and savoured my non-dairy-death dough stick, whilst Isabella and Ian fought to eat their crepe the fastest. Ian then proceeded to try and paint his lovely white shirt in the excitement, much to Is’s amusement.

Once the indulgence was over and Ian had made an effort to clean himself up, I dragged them down the back streets of Ueno towards Hongo and my University campus. After a little trek I managed to find the perimeter wall of Todai, but failed dismally to be able to find a way in, which didn’t involve scaling the wall. So we kept walking around, in so, passing a very cool house with a very nicely placed spiral staircase which was in full view due to the glazed wall. We managed to drag ourselves away from the coolness of such a house and finally got to one of the more vehicular entrances of the University. I then led them through the campus showing them the old style Japanese kendo training room, our very cunning underground gym with a sports field on top, Engineering Building 2; which has a newer building trying to eat another building with the nicest roofed court yard that I have been in (except for, possibly, the British Library), our very cool central library; complete with stags head and chandeliers in one of the ground floor reading rooms, and Akamon.

I dragged the jet-lagged pair to a cheap izakaya near campus where we sample some more Japanese food via my random selection method. Some yaki-undon, tempura fish, kimchee pork and eda-mame later I’ve apparently found Is’s and Ian’s repletion level so we drag ourselves out of the izakaya and I show them to the train station.

All in all a very interesting sightseeing day for all.